The demand for multimedia services that can be received via mobile phones and other handheld devices is set to grow rapidly over the next few years. As a consequence of the services that are desired by the end-users, multimedia services use high bandwidths. The most cost-effective way of providing such services is in a form of broadcast transmissions, rather than unicast (i.e. point-to-point) transmissions. Typically, tens of channels carrying news, movies, sports, etc. and are broadcast simultaneously over a network, to potentially thousands of handheld devices.
Technologies for delivering multimedia broadcast services over cellular systems, such as the Mobile Broadcast and Multicast Service (MBMS) have been developed. MBMS is a broadcasting and multicasting service offered over mobile telecommunications networks, such as General Packet Radio System (GPRS) networks, Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks, Evolved Packet System (EPS), and the like. The technical specifications for MBMS include 3GPP TS 22.146, 3GPP TS 23.246 and 3GPP TS 26.346.
Some cellular networks are arranged to deliver only broadcast services. In such a system, each individual cell (supported by a Node B) forms part of a cluster of cells, a cluster either defining a subset of the cells of the network or, in some instances, the cluster will define all of the cells of the network. Broadcast services are transmitted simultaneously using identical physical resources by all cells of a cluster, thereby allowing mobile stations/user equipment to combine signals received from more than one cell. Broadcast services may be transmitted by more than one cluster, in which case all cells of the plurality of clusters involved will use identical physical resources for the broadcast.
In a ‘dedicated’ broadcast network, where all physical resources are used for downlink transmission-only, and therefore no uplink traffic must be handled, the known network structures, as described later with respect to FIG. 1 are somewhat inefficient.
A need therefore exists for an improved method and apparatus for providing multimedia broadcast multicast services wherein one or more of the abovementioned disadvantage(s) may be alleviated.